It is a common practice of vendors of computer systems to provide a restore disk with a purchased computer system, usually a CD-ROM, which may be used to restore the hard drive of the computer system to the state it was in when the system was purchased, or to restore or replace particular originally installed software components such as drivers, application programs, and so forth. The conventional restore disks provide a variety of useful purposes. For example, a customer of a computer system may accidently delete from the hard drive a software component that is either desired by the user or necessary for proper functioning of the computer system, in which case a restore disk may be used to replace the deleted component. Or, the restore disk allows a user to intentionally delete presently unwanted preinstalled software with the ability to easily restore it in the future if desired. Also, a software component may become corrupted, and any malfunctioning caused by such corruption can be remedied by replacing the corrupted component from the restore disk. Likewise, when a malfunction occurs, having the ability to remove and replace particular software components can greatly aid in diagnosing the cause of the malfunction. For example, if a particular piece of hardware inexplicably malfunctions, one may delete or uninstall the driver associated with that piece of hardware and reinstall that driver from the system restore CD. Even if the problem is not solved, it is useful to know that the problem is not being caused by a corrupted or missing driver and other causes may then be investigated. Finally, the restore disk can be used to restore the hard drive in the event of a hard drive failure.
Presently, with the prevalence of the Internet, software upgrades and updates are now continually and readily available from a variety of sources. Upgrades and updates are desirable because they generally fix errors (bugs) and/or provide enhanced features. Before the widespread availability of the Internet, other than the retail purchase of a major upgrade, it was generally only the most adept computer users that bothered to obtain updates, which generally meant seeking out their availability, contacting the vendor for disks, or perhaps dialing into a vendor's bulletin board system and downloading.
Presently, updates are routinely made available free of charge. For example, many software vendors make updates freely available on their web pages. Many software applications contain a self-updating feature, for example, that takes advantage of Internet access and which may even be run from within the application itself. Also, there exists a number of Internet-based update services that automate the process of obtaining updates.
Thus, although restore disks can be very useful, the more a user takes advantage of available upgrades, the more reluctant a user may be to use an outdated restore disk since it may cause an updated file to be replaced with an older version of the originally installed file.
In the event of a hard disk drive catastrophe, regular full system backups are one solution to the loss of acquired updates, however, this obviates the need for a restore disk. Furthermore, many users are not inclined to do full backups since it involves a great deal of time (e.g., particularly if floppy disks or other small capacity storage media are used), and/or an additional hardware expense (e.g., tape drive, large capacity removable media, etc.). With a restore disk, a user can also protect against loss by backing up only data. In that case, the system can be restored with the system restore disk (as well as any install disks of later purchased software) and reinstalling the backed up data. However, this is primarily useful shortly after the computer is purchased, and tends to lose relevancy the longer the system is in use since any updates obtained subsequent to the computer purchase will be lost. Although the Internet makes individual updates readily obtainable, when considering many updates accumulated gradually over time, the loss can be significant.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system restore apparatus and method which improves upon the conventional restore disks by remaining up to date throughout the life of the computer.